Visual Baseball: a look (again) at Andy Pettite and the HOF

Hi there. I discovered a glitch in the data I used for the career pitching Rankometers I posted last week. Pitchers who had been traded midseason had their WAR split into two and were not showing in the rankings. I’ve made these corrections and wanted to re-post.

Just to remind you of how this works, we’re using Rankometer to examine a pitcher’s career by visualizing how his WAR stacked up against his peers each season. Since a Hall of Famer should be performing at an elite level, we look at the top 30 starting pitchers in each season, since they would seemingly represent the “elite” (each team’s ace, the top 20 percent, however you want to look at it).

Let’s first look at a first ballot Hall of Famer, Greg Maddux. What do my eyes tell me? Not much of a change here since my first post. But it’s a good way to adjust our eyes. This is what a first ballot Hall of Famer looks like.

Now let’s look at Mike Mussina. As before, Rankometer reveals a lesser pitcher than Maddux, but still an elite pitcher for an extended period of time.

Now, let’s look at Andy Pettitte. What do your eyes tell you when you look at his Rankometer? Since adjusting the data, Pettitte looks even worse. The most die-hard Yankees fan would have difficulty making a case for the Hall of Fame after looking at this Rankometer.